Campus celebrated the completion of two major milestones — decommissioning the BASIS mainframe and SRX legacy firewall — on Wednesday, April 6, at the Garden Pavilion on Razorback Road. 

"I appreciate the care and concern you all showed at every step of the projects. For example, we delayed the project a few times to make sure everyone was satisfied and comfortable moving forward with the sunset," Ann Bordelon, vice chancellor for finance and administration, said at the event. "On behalf of the chancellor and entire leadership team, we really appreciate all the effort that went into this herculean task. It's a big deal and not unnoticed." 

The mainframe that powered BASIS, the Business and Administrative Strategic Information System,  for more than 25 years was powered off Dec. 20, 2021. This was the second phase of decommissioning BASIS, which was replaced by Workday in July 2020.   

The Juniper SRX firewall was removed from service on Sunday, Feb. 20. Since December 2021, the university has migrated 2,046 servers as well as cameras, printers, workstations and card reading devices to newer, more secure, enterprise firewalls.  

"I want to personally thank all the IT services staff and campus IT partners for their hard work in reaching these two goals," Steve Krogull, CIO, said. "We had a lot of heavy lifting to do to decommission the main frame and migrate SRX. Today, I want to take a step back to show my gratitude and the university's gratitude for all the work you do. Each one of you worked together to carry each other's loads and to move mountains. I'm deeply thankful for your commitment to work together to move our institution forward."